Weary but exuberant, more than 100 people who weathered Hurricane Katrina and its hellish aftermath in New Orleans arrived in Greenville on Wednesday, where they were greeted by cheers and fed their first square meal in days.

"Welcome to Greenville, we love you!" well-wishers shouted as evacuees got off the three buses that took them from Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport to their temporary quarters at the Palmetto Expo Center.

Some evacuees pumped their fists and waved back, but city officials wouldn't allow reporters to talk to them once they arrived at the Expo Center and held the crowd behind yellow police tape

Richard Carter got off the plane in rubber waders and a straw hat. He talked of little more than the water, saying "you could smell that it was contaminated."

He spent nine days in his home, he said, and expressed concern for eight dogs he left in a New Orleans church.

The chartered Boeing 737, which early in the day had been scheduled to land at GSP at 12:45 p.m., arrived nearly seven hours later. Federal officials gave no indication of the reason for the delay or why the evacuees would be from New Orleans rather than from the Astrodome in Houston, as they had been told earlier.

"It's very difficult for them to project the flow of evacuees in New Orleans," Greenville City Manager Jim Bourey said.

The group of 118 that arrived Wednesday is expected to be followed by another group today, he said.

"They have told us they are coming for a week, two weeks, potentially up to a month," Bourey said. "However, we have made provisions that they could be here for a much longer period of time -- many weeks, and potentially into months."

The local Salvation Army can feed up to 5,000 people three meals a day indefinitely, he said. The American Red Cross has provided volunteers to help the evacuees get settled in at the Expo Center.

Meanwhile, donations and offers to volunteer have poured in. Two rooms at County Square were filled with donated items. More than 1,000 volunteers are signed on to help. And the city's hot line for people who want to make donations or volunteer fielded more than 1,300 calls in its first half-day of operation and 2,500 on Wednesday.

"We hope people will be patient with us as we sort through those," Mayor Knox White said. "There will be many opportunities to help in the coming weeks and months."

The first of what could be a wave of 1,000 or more evacuees got off the buses at the Expo Center at 8:55 p.m.

They entered large tents that are normally used for decontamination after hazardous materials accidents to take showers, and made their way up the walkway to Hall C, where hundreds of cots and queen-sized air mattresses had been set up. Once inside, they were given food and screened by health and social services officials.

School officials, Red Cross volunteers and even people from the Social Security Administration were waiting to address their needs.

White said City Hall had received calls from people concerned about public safety, "some legitimate and some very unfair," over people who may have been exposed to infectious diseases coming from a city where lawlessness has been rampant in the days following the hurricane.

Bourey said all the evacuees had been screened before they left New Orleans. "I want to assure everybody in this community there is going to be no safety issue. There will be no security issue," he said.

The Expo Center continued operating normally Wednesday, with 1,400 people attending a United Way luncheon in another part of the building. Bourey said the city-owned center could house evacuees through November if necessary, without canceling any events.

Some kept vigil outside the Expo Center most of the day, waiting to welcome the evacuees. Amy Garland drove from Seneca with her two children, Hunter and Bailey, ages 3 and 8. They held signs that read, "Welcome to Greenville. Our hearts are with you all."

Nina Guza's children brought a big bag of Milky Way candy bars to give to the evacuees, but they weren't given the opportunity.

"We're just overwhelmed that they've had to go through the tragedy they've gone through, and we pray that we can do something to make their life and transition easier -- and to let them know we care," said LaVon Moore, who was outside the Expo Center.

Meanwhile, the first evacuees arrived in Columbia earlier in the day.

The state was scheduled to receive six flights of evacuees Wednesday, but only one jet with 27 people had landed by late afternoon. State officials said they received no explanation from federal emergency management officials coordinating the flights.

A spokesman for U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said several state and local officials had complained about the operations of Federal Emergency Management Administration. He said FEMA officials will ultimately have to answer for their actions in South Carolina as well as in the Gulf states.

"At the appropriate time and place, FEMA is going to have to account for a lot of questions," said Kevin Graham, a spokesman for the senator. "There will be hearings on this, about exactly what type of response there was and exactly what went wrong."

The 19 men, 8 women and a dachshund from New Orleans arrived shortly before 1 p.m. at Columbia Metropolitan Airport. Officials had expected more in the flight. The Delta jet had a capacity of about 180 passengers, state officials said.

Three received medical attention and one was sent to a local hospital, said Joe Farmer, a spokesman for the South Carolina Emergency Management Division. He said he couldn't disclose the nature of the medical condition that required hospitalization.

The remaining evacuees were offered showers, telephones and a snack before being sent to a processing center on the campus of the University of South Carolina, Farmer said.

"They looked a little tired, as one would expect given what they have been through," Farmer said.

About 300 volunteers and state officials waited throughout the day in Columbia to welcome the evacuees. Columbia Mayor Bob Coble and Gov. Mark Sanford were among the officials who greeted the evacuees.

Those arriving today will join approximately 400 families the Red Cross says have arrived in the state on their own during the last week. Officials say they expect as many as 18,000 evacuees eventually to be sent to the state, 6,000 of whom are medical patients and their families.

Legare said officials don't expect any medical evacuees to arrive today in the state, though some of those on the planes will need medical attention.

Staff writers Ben Szobody and Ashley Fletcher contributed to this report.